This invention relates to devices for cutting sheet material and more particularly to devices for making straight, smooth cuts in sheet material.
The requirement for making straight, smooth cuts in sheet material has long existed and has been answered by apparatus ranging from a hand-held straight edge and knife combination to the familiar guillotine-type paper cutter to numerous other structures. Some of these structures, such as those of Tripp, U.S. Pat. No. 697,902, and Morrison et al, U.S. Pat. No. 614,407, have included the improvement of clamping the sheet material to be cut between a pair of straight edge members and then running a knife blade along the edge of those two members to effect a straight, smooth cut. However, these devices have suffered from a number of common deficiencies, relating both to effectiveness of operation and to safety. These deficiencies have included excessive exposure of a dangerously sharp cutting blade edge, difficulty in maintaining the desired alignment between the material to be cut and the cutting edge and a failure to support adequately the cutting blade to prevent deflection of the cutting blade away from the straight edge surface such as would tend to give an uneven cut.